Author : Anson Benjamin Soderbery
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781124908502
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (85 download)
Book Synopsis Essays on the Role of Firm Behavior in International Trade by : Anson Benjamin Soderbery
Download or read book Essays on the Role of Firm Behavior in International Trade written by Anson Benjamin Soderbery and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation discusses the role firms behavior takes in shaping our understanding of international trade. It discusses the impact on well held theoretical and empirical results from international trade when accounting for commonalities in firm behavior that distort the economy. Chapter 1 develops a model of international trade where firms are heterogeneous across two dimensions: capacity and productivity. Capacity constraints rationalize empirical results that are anomalous to new trade theory. When capacity is relatively abundant, the model predicts stronger competition (selection) in larger markets. Con- versely, when capacity is relatively "tight" constrained firms weaken competition and boost the average price level in larger markets - similar to tacit collusion. Under inter- national trade, constrained firms choose to sell a greater fraction of their production in the largest accessible market. Capacity constraints can thus magnify (dampen) domestic price and competition distortions when foreign markets are relatively large (small). Chapter 2 addresses biases in estimates of the impact of product variety on prices and welfare when market structure is inaccurately defined. We employ a market- based data set on the U.S. automobile market that allows us to define goods varieties at a more precise level, as well as discern location of production and ownership of varieties. Our estimates of price and welfare changes from new varieties in the U.S. automobile sector are twice as large as standard estimates when using our detailed market-based data. We also show that new varieties introduced by foreign-owned affiliates provided an additional 70% welfare gain during our sample. Chapter 3 notes that estimates of consumer gains from imported products rely on Feenstra (1994)'s method to estimate elasticities of substitution. Through a Monte Carlo experiment, simulated estimates suggest substantial biases due to weak instruments. However, the derivation of the elasticity of substitution drastically mitigates these biases.